The present invention relates to communication systems in general and in particular to multimedia call processing systems.
Call centers are commonly provided by companies who field telephone calls from large numbers of people. For example, airlines provide call centers to allow customers to make travel arrangements. Brokerage firms provide call centers to allow clients to buy and sell securities and many consumer companies provide call centers to provide technical assistance regarding their products or to answer consumer questions.
The traditional manner of constructing a call center is to utilize one or more private branch exchanges (PBX). A PBX connects a number of telephones to the public switched telephone network. Software within the PBX routes an incoming call to an available customer agent at one of the telephones if an agent is available. Alternatively, the PBX places a call on hold until an agent is free. The capacity of the system to handle increased numbers of telephone calls is generally increased by adding additional PBXs and additional customer agents.
While this traditional call center architecture has been used successfully in the past, it has several shortcomings. For example, the traditional PBX-based call center is only equipped to handle voice telephone calls. As computers become more prevalent, many people wish to interact with an agent via an alternative media such as via fax, via e-mail or via the World Wide Web. Furthermore, telephone calls need not be received from the public switched telephone network, but could also be received on a local intranet or a wide area computer network such as the Internet. While it has been feasible to provide these capabilities separately, the results have been a non-homogenous system that cannot be operated in a seamless manner by the agents.
In addition, the traditional PBX-based call center requires that all the agents be at a central location in order to answer telephone calls. However, many companies are utilizing teleworking, wherein an agent can work from home in order to reduce company overhead. However, it has not previously been practical to design an automatic call distribution center that facilitates agents working outside the office. With a PBX, a voice and separate data connection were required for a teleworker. The voice connection is typically implemented using a voice connection through the PSTN. The data connection is needed to allow the agent to connect to order entry systems or customer service databases. The data connection is made by a separate modem or PPD connection. Establishing both connections in a conventional center is complicated and expensive.
Given the shortcomings in the art, there is a need for a call processing system that can communicate with a caller via a number of different media that can facilitate agents working from various locations. In addition, the system should be modular in order to reduce the cost of any one component but still be able to operate in an integrated fashion.
The present invention is a networked call center system that is adapted to handle calls from customers via different media and to route the calls to a customer service agent. The system includes a gateway that receives telephone calls from the public switched telephone network and a gatekeeper that determines an address of a destination where the call should be routed.
A number of agent terminals are coupled to the network and receive a call when a customer service agent is available. An automatic call distribution server monitors the status of the agent terminals and routes a call to an agent terminal when an agent is available.
The call distribution system further includes an e-mail and web server application that receives inquiries from customers and routes the inquiries to the ACD server. A music/video server is provided to produce audio and video background music and announcements for a call when no agent terminal is available. An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) unit can also be coupled to the network to help quantify the nature of a call and in some cases process the call without interaction with an agent. A firewall and Internet server are also coupled to the network to receive calls from an Internet Protocol computer network. In the presently preferred embodiment of the invention the gateway, gatekeeper, automatic call distribution server and audio/video server and IVR unit are H.323 compatible to handle multimedia calls.